A Stirling Endeavor

updated 9/18/09

The effects of the Korean War were still very evident less than six years after the suspension of hostilities, when a young airman arrived in Korea

Edwin (Ed) Stirling was a young Airman Second Class (E-3) who came to Osan Air Base in April 1959 to become a member of the 6314th Field Maintenance Squadron. He left Korea in May 1960. I've copied large parts of a long letter Ed wrote to me accompanying the photos he sent. Ed's remembrances give a good feeling for how a young airman felt in Korea a little more than six years after the base opened. Here's the Stirling Endeavor, in his own words.

When I came to Korea, I was struck by the lack of trees. Only young trees covered the hills around Osan. I was told that the Japanese, during their 35-year occupation until the end of WWII, had pretty much denuded the country of trees and other natural resources. It was rare to find a tree of more than a few inches in girth.

Our barracks were built to withstand artillery or bomb hits by spreading the living quarters out on 6 wings with the showers and latrines and power plants in the center. Capacity was 24 men to a wing, but ours was usually 18 and no more than 20. The NCO wings only had about 10 or 15 guys. The NCOs had desks and extra chairs and larger wall lockers. One had a permanent craps table. They took the top off of a table they scrounged from some place, turned it upside down and stapled a GI blanket to it to make a good surface for dice. On the rare barracks inspection, they just turned the table top over and it looked like a normal table. That game went on almost non-stop the whole time I was there.

Poker was the game of choice in our barracks and I came home with nearly $5,000 in winnings. We played hearts when everybody went broke between paydays. We were paid by the Army, so the Eagle only flew once a month. Those pictures of us enjoying the vices of Chicol Village were, no doubt, taken on a payday. An Airman Second Class was paid about $96 a month.

I liked the Koreans that I met. They are a wonderful people who have been victimized through most of their history. I am delighted to see that their lives are a lot better now than when I was there.

Each wing of the barracks had a houseboy that cleaned up, did our laundry and shined our shoes. We each pitched in a few bucks every payday. Ours was a nice kid named Kim, Pyong Hui. He and I were pretty good friends and he invited my buddy Ralph Bankes and me to his home in Pyeongtaek one Sunday for dinner and to meet his family. He was their primary support. His dad had a small rice paddy to help feed them. He had a younger brother of about 10 and an older brother in the ROK Marines and a sister who was a student at a university in Seoul. That day we dined on Kimchi and rice, and a meat that they called Ki which I think means dog. Ralph insisted it was pork. And we drank a local liquor called Mok-ju, a thin milky wine kind of thing that someone told me was homemade from rice. It was drunk from a saucer type dish and tasted like fire water.

The base was closed a couple times and we were restricted to base. Once was late in the year, I think maybe October or November, 1959. I never did find out why, but rumors were rampant that the North Koreans were preparing an invasion. That time I think we were closed in for about a week.

In April, 1960 Syngman Rhee [then Korean president] was kicked out. He fled with his American wife, several top government officials and a couple of million dollars in gold. They all went to Hawaii, where I believe he lived out the rest of his life. The election had been held in March and he was re-elected dictator, but a lot of the Koreans didn't buy it and rioting broke out all over the country including at Chicol Village. Mobs of people gathered outside the gate and shouted anti-American slogans, "Yankee go home" and that sort of thing, and the ROK Army and police would wade into the crowd and beat hell out of them. We went down to the main gate to watch a couple of times. It was weird to see some of the people we knew in the crowd.

Being restricted to base meant that the EM [enlisted men's] club did great business. It was crowded all the time and as more beer was consumed a lot of fights broke out. One big fight was especially bad when most of the front wall of the club was broken out and several guys were hurt. The EM club was ordered closed by the base commander and our beer supply was cut off. I don't know if that helped or made things worse, but as the restriction went on everybody seemed to be ready to punch out anyone who irritated them.

Several of us who were considered non-essential personnel were assigned to perimeter guard duty. So there I was with my M-1, sitting in a sand-bagged ditch with about 10 inches of gooey, sticky mud in the bottom, in the pouring rain, wishing we had a company of Marines or Army infantry with us. If we would have been attacked, I don't know how this group of clerks and mechanics would have performed.

It was a bad time. My memory fades about how long this went on, but I am sure it was more than a week.

In those days, the Air Force had a rule that anyone returning from overseas duty with six months or less left on their enlistment had to take a discharge or re-enlist. I would have seven months left on my enlistment so I was preparing to extend my tour by one month to take the discharge. Just before I had to do that, however, the Air Force changed the rule to make it a year instead of six months. I immediately went FIGMO (you know what that means, I assume) and was soon off to the land of milk and honey.

The tradition when we got our rotation orders was to buy a fifth of Seagrams VO, take the yellow and black ribbon from around the neck, roll up a copy of the orders and tie the ribbon around it and stick it into the little pencil pocket on the sleeve of our fatigue shirt. Seeing that ribbon, most NCOs and officers would just smile and leave us alone. We were FIGMO and didn't have time left to do anything. I remember my CO, Captain Cardwell, yelling in frustration one day, "God dammit! Everybody in this f---ing outfit is either a green bean or FIGMO. How the hell do we get anything done?" A greenbean was a new guy, also referred to as FNG. (F--- in' New Guy).

My service experience in Korea is something I am glad that I did, but I would never do it again. I found it more annoying than anything else. We were certainly never in any danger and most of the time it was an interesting adventure. But, I was near the end of my enlistment and I absolutely hated being in the Air Force and could not wait to get out. I always felt like we were only playing at soldiering, yet I never felt like a soldier. One of the major regrets that I have always held was that I passed up an opportunity to enlist in the Marine Corps. (My father was a career navy man, 22 years, who had service ribbons from WWII, Korea and Vietnam.)

In the other services, enlisted men seemed to get more respect because they were actually combatants. In the AF, of course, it was the officers who carried the fighting responsibilities and enlistees were support; clerks and mechanics for the most part. In my time, enlisted men in the AF were treated like servants by the officer corps. I have often said that the only practical skills that I learned in the Air Force were how to mop floors and operate a floor buffer. I felt it was a waste of four years of my life.

If you're an Osan (or Korea) old-timer, I'm sure Ed's words stirred memories in you as they did in me. Now that you have Ed's thoughts and memories of Korea, take a look at the images he brought to the story.